Stoneground Amaretto Semolina Wheat Sourdough

I made this loaf using some of Felin Ganol’s amaretto semolina for the first time yesterday. I was expecting a slightly textured crumb, perhaps similar to the Khorasan loaf but instead was pleased to find a soft mouth-feel crumb as you do with wholemeal, only this is lighter.

To give you some idea of the texture of the semolina it’s in the bowl above to the right. Next to it on the left is amaretto white flour.

In all my US text baking books semolina refers to durum wheat semolina, a very hard wheat, harder than the common wheat used for bread. Durum wheat semolina is yellow in colour, similar to the colour of cornmeal which can be confused with on appearance. Here I’ve only ever seen common wheat semolina, as common wheat is grown and milled in the UK and therefore makes sense we have wheat semolina.

Semolina refers to the size of the grain, put some between your fingers and you’ll feel little tiny balls rather than powdery flour.

When milling the wheat berries between the stones of the mill wholemeal is produced at the end of grinding. To make white flour, wholemeal gets put through a fine sieving process and out of that process comes white flour, in-between white flour, bran and semolina. From my understanding the sieve will have different mesh holes and the different sizes holes will let out these different size particles; white flour, in-between white flour, bran and semolina.

You see how I like to live on the edge here with my loaves…oh yes...always full of excitement around the suburbs I can tell you.

Being that this semolina was from amaretto wheat it produced a great tasting loaf. I was very surprised how easy it was to handle, it behaved well producing the amaretto’s characteristic rip and crust. Delicious tasting crust it produces with sweet notes.

I held back on the water for this loaf as it was my first one, wasn’t sure how it would handle. Next time I would increase water slightly.